Weilerstein and Barnatan thrill with Brahms sonata at SummerFest

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and SummerFest music director Inon Barnatan. (Photo by Ken Jacques/La Jolla Music Society)

The 2025 version of SummerFest, La Jolla Music Society’s ambitious and sprawling summer festival, is taking interesting interdisciplinary chances: “Tasting Notes,” an edible mashup of food and music (August 14); jazz vocalist Cecile McLorin Savant’s synergies with baroque instruments (August 16); and tap and percussive dance fused with banjo and violin (August 17).

And on Wednesday night, SummerFest proved it can take such risks while still delivering its chamber music bread-and-butter with style.

The evening’s anchor at The Conrad was Brahms’ Cello Sonata in E Minor, performed by celebrated cellist Alisa Weilerstein and SummerFest music director Inon Barnatan. Despite 230-plus recordings, including benchmarks by Rostropovich, du Pré, Yo-Yo Ma, and Casals, Weilerstein and Barnatan’s 2022 interpretation was named the best, period, by the industry’s bible, Gramophone magazine, for respecting Brahms’ score, attending both to detail and the long line, and achieving live “frisson” in a studio recording.

All three were present in Wednesday’s performance — but with the frisson of a live performance in the acoustically vivid Baker-Baum Hall. Though Brahms treated the two instruments as equals, the cello’s lower-register music is sometimes overwhelmed by the piano. Barnatan wisely took a more supportive tack in the first two movements, letting Weilerstein’s rich, earthy, aching tone resonate. In the third movement, Barnatan cut loose, playing with such fire that he and Weilerstein outdid their recording in intensity.

As lecturer Michael Gerdes explained in the pre-concert, Barnatan’s “Looking Back, Looking Forward” theme for the evening’s three works refers to Brahms’ quotation of Bach’s Art of the Fugue in the cello sonata: Koechlin’s modeling the instrumentation of his Quatres petites pieces on Brahms’ Horn Trio, and Glazunov’s taking inspiration from Schubert’s two-cello String Quintet in C Major (SummerFest performance coming August 20) for his own quintet. As for “Looking Forward,” none of these pieces is especially ground-breaking, but all deserved a spirited hearing.

If Koechlin’s Quatres petites pieces seemed the slightest musically, it’s unquestionably well crafted, effective as a palette cleanser, and gave Stefan Dohr, the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal horn, the chance to whet appetites for his August 15 performance of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. Even in Koechlin’s relatively unchallenging horn part, Dohr showed his beauty of tone and his versatility — especially in the almost trumpet-like timbre he achieved in the closing scherzando.

Once hailed as “one day the leader of our nationalist composers,” Alexander Glazunov’s (1865-1936) reputation today is one of unrealized promise. Even Tchaikovsky encouraged him: “You have genius, but something prevents you from developing breadth and depth.” (When Glazunov pressed for details, Tchaikovsky replied: “a certain lengthiness and absence of pauses.”)

Though Glazunov was only 26 when he wrote it, his quintet shows compositional skill, melodic inspiration, rhythmic interest, and an ear for contrasts in mood and color. Still, it needed the energy and elite musicianship SummerFest brought to bear to leave an impression.

The quintet’s five musicians comprised concertmasters, principals, Grammy nominees, career grant winners, and/or festival artistic directors. Arguably first among equals was Tessa Lark, the animated and agile first violin, who made the first and third movements sing. Powered by Sterling Elliott, carrying the higher-register cello part, and Teng Li (the Chicago Symphony’s first violist), the “Russian folk” based fourth movement (Allegro moderato) virtually rocked.

Placing the last half of Wednesday’s program in such persuasive hands was the ultimate counter for those who prefer that neglected music stay unheard.

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